This post was published long before the Mists of Pandara Expansion.
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Hater of Gluth

I think I hate Gluth the most. It’s a close thing between Gluth and Grobbulus. I think in the end, I hate Gluth more.
As a guild, those two bosses in Naxx have given us the most trouble. They’re our stumbling blocks.

In Grob at least I’m contributing to our success. Everyone’s getting injected.. and everyone’s running to the correct place to drop their poisons.

In Gluth I’m just there to DPS. Until a Decimate happens I ignore the Chow entirely. In fact.. I’m even ignoring them if they wander up to our area. I notice them.. and I -want- to do something about them.. and I feel -furious- when they’re too close to Gluth and he eats them.. but I can’t do anything to help. I can’t -make- them go to the back of the room. I -HATE- that.

It’s the feeling of helplessness. I don’t think any other boss makes me feel that helpless.

Anyway, in NAXX-25 West Kingdom has downed every hallway except for Construct. In Construct we’ve downed Patchwerk.. and -finally- over the weekend we downed Grobbulus (first time in 25-man) and made many many attempts at Gluth. At best we got Gluth down to 8% health.

I think we’re very close to “getting” Gluth.. but I don’t think I’ll ever hate that fight less. I’m just really really glad I don’t have to be a kiter.

10 comments to Hater of Gluth

I feel your pain Nib. My guild is in the same spot, except we’re doing 10 man Naxx. We don’t have enough level 80′s to do 25 yet. Gluth really is a pain. We did get Grobbulus down last week for the first time though. YAY!

As a follower of your blog and someone that has been greatly benefited by your UI advice, the only thing I can say is that Gluth is easy when compared to Thadius. It looks like Blizzard made this quarter the real trial for Naxx.

The problem with Thadius hc is that if 3 of your guildmates fail (within the 25) your whole raid will probably fail. They may wipe the whole raid (which generates blaming assignment) or simply not be in the right spot avoiding the correct stack of buffs. What I have seen on several guilds is that this is the real test. Is a guild prepared to help everyone to me able to go through Thadius?

Funny, I kid you not we’ve never not oneshot Gluth, either in 25 or 10. Don’t get me wrong, we wipe PLENTY on other stuff. We couldn’t down Thadius last night for instance. Grobbulous is a right pain. But for some reason, we don’t have Gluth trouble.

Warlocks just need to use your fast AOE blasty spells on the chow. What, you don’t have any? Us your high powered single target instants. Or, maybe just use your group stun to slow ‘em down. You’re kidding, none of those either?

Best you can do is maybe shadowbolt and hope your other dps do the job. Basically you’ve got to kill ‘em quick, but warlocks like to kill things as slowly and as painfully as possible. On account of its crueler that way. A DoT is just going to give the chow an off flavor when Gluth eats ‘em.

One pointer, your paladins have Holy Wrath and your mages have frost nova, and your hunters have frost trap — this slows or stops the chow momentarily and gives the DPS more time to finish them.

Hrrm. I can relate on the Grobbulus part; it took us eight or so wipes and a calling of the raid, and coming back the next week in order for our Naxx10 to get him down. Week two, however, we one shot him for reasons we didn’t understand — I don’t think we did anything different.

For Gluth, however, we didn’t have issues at all. Either the hunter or the ret pally or a death knight kited them, with the help of Earthbind Totem, Frost Traps, and/or Frost Nova to slow them…

One shot Thaddius.

… On twenty-fives, however, we sometimes get unlucky on Patchwerk, always have one shotted Grobb and Gluth, and Thaddius is our fail fight. It always takes us a while to get him, no matter how many times we’ve done it before.

Gluth sucks. IMO its the hardest fight in there unless you have a really awesome kiter, and lets face it: PvE’ers are not Kiters by nature. I don’t know that I really like putting so much pressure on one person’s shoulders either. I mean, what do you tell them: “kite it well, we win. Fail, and we fail. Good luck, and godspeed”. Helplessness… check.

The best way I’ve seen the kiting for Gluth is to use a DK or a Ret Paladin with some tanking gear. Everyone stacks at max healing range to the two tanks tanking gluth and every time Death and Decay is on cooldown its cast over the group since it’ll be the healers pulling aggro on the Zombies. This way, when the zombies get there, they quickly retarget to the DK. Keeping a frost trap down and dancing around OUTSIDE of the frost trap effect while a priest heals the kiter is a big means towards success. The priest is used because damage absorbed by PW:S does not produce the damage increasing debuff on the tank.

And really, if you’re holding you’re rotation well, AoEing during decimates you’re doing -your- job. Gluth is one of those fights where every ounce of DPS is helpful.

Gluth is easy … once all the dps know to switch as soon as decimate happens and slow/burn down the zombies asap.

As mentioned above by several people frost nova, frost trap, holy wrath, earthbind totem, desecrated ground, shadowfury, etc. should all help a lot.

It’s important to have a good kiter or two on the zombies debore decimate though – frost-mage/hunter/shaman tend to work best. If you’re lucky enough to have a mage who aoe-grinded(ground?) a few levels as frost, you’re golden.

*sigh* more wipes last night. Best we did was 12%. I’m sure we’ll get it.. I just think it will be a stumbling block for a while longer.

I like the idea of D&D on the stacked up healers/ranged folks. I’ll mention it to the RL.

At this point we have a lot of ideas.. and not a whole lot of win. We have one -really- good kiting hunter.. and a couple of .. so-so kiters. We just need to get a handle on it and I’m sure we’ll be golden.

As for Thadius.. we havn’t had much problem with that in 10-mans.. whereas both Grob and Gluth have been stumbling blocks in both 10- and 25-mans.

Gluth is all about the kiting. If you can spare a ret pally or even better a playy tank it is very easy. We have even used hunter pets to tank for short periods when the debuff stacks to free one of these for kiting.

Get the hunters at Max range and have them disengage back to drop slow traps every time they are on cd. Also get them to MD loose zombies back to the kiter.

A second before decimate the locks should start seeding the group up and the mages should frost nova the pack in place. A couple more seeds and aoe should see the decimate over and you can quickly get back to dps. Even for good kiters it is important to keep it too a minimum and effectively dealing with decimate is the best way to do it.